9 replies to this topic

[hitechsol]

I am planning to start a blog which will basically provide news coverage to a specific industry. Most of the news in that industrty comes from the PR departments of the makers in the industry. They provide news in the form of detailed press releases to the meduia and other interested individuals and organizations.

Most of the time, I have no other source of information except the Press Releases provided by these makers. Should I upload the press releases on my blog as it hits my mail box or....? How can I rewrite the press releases without giving the impression of plagirising the content on their sites?

Thanks and regards

[EGOL]

I used to republish press releases from educational institutions and government agencies. They enjoyed seeing their releases on my site and often sent them directly to me asking me to publish them. These worked great for several years. My visitors consumed that content and my site often outranked the original source in the Google SERPs. I published these mostly verbatim but often added commentary and often added images that were greatly superior to what was given to me. I had hundreds of these releases on my site. They looked great and were very high quality content.

In October 2011 my site dropped a couple positions in the SERPs for almost all of its rankings. (when your rankings drop a couple places your traffic goes to crap). The date of the drop was a Panda date. These releases were seen as duplicate content. I deleted the ones with the lowest level of traffic. The ones that had higher levels of traffic from my own visitors were set to noindex follow. After a few weeks my rankings came back to normal levels.

Fortunately I still had lots of original content after taking an ax to the press releases. So, when my rankings came back I still had lots of traffic.

In my opinion, publishing a bunch of press releases - even if you edit them or add commentary - is not a good idea.

Edited by EGOL, 16 December 2012 - 10:35 AM.

[iamlost]

If all that you doing is republishing, in whole or in part, you will only have the value of collation to offer readers...not usually a compelling business case. You need to offer some additional vale, such as the historic background of company, people mentioned, product, etc. What competitors are doing that is similar, different, etc. Plus of course some opinion that is worth others reading.

When doing that extra you should (in most jurisdictions, be able to quote relevant parts of releases, as part of the story and include a link to the original.

I do note that if you do a good job the PR and HR resources depts of the companies will likely be more than happy to provide additional information that you could use.

However, as EGOL mentions, it is a difficult business model especially in the short to medium term.

[EGOL]

I suggest writing a blog about the products and services offered in your industry.

You can write articles on how to select them for various types of use, how to use them for maximum enjoyment, how to care for them, how to maintain them, how/where they are made.

Get a digital camera and take lots of photos. Make your blog look interesting and attractive.

[hitechsol]

Thanks to all the great folks about the valuable opinions they have shared with me. I am not sure whether the nature of the industry should make any difference. However, the one I am considering is the cars industry.

As you know the industry has lots of news releases every single week. I plan to deal with a tiny geographical segment of the industry. Occassionally, I could add my comments. However, I am unable to do so it every time time. Please suggest should I still avoid republishing the content verbatim?

[EGOL]

Please suggest should I still avoid republishing the content verbatim?

If you publish verbatim your site has a high probability of being hit by the Panda algorithm. That will cause the Google rankings on every page of your site to fall.

Even if you escape Panda, if you publish verbatim Google will see your page as one of many on the web for that content and filter your page from the Google search results.

The only people who have an excellent chance of publishing duplicate content without a problem are very strong, high authority sites. My site is PR7 and that wasn't good enough.

=========================

If you simply want to display duplicate content for visitors to read and not have it rank in the search engines, you can place it on your site with noindex / follow. That will keep it out of the Google search results and should avoid Panda problems.

Edited by EGOL, 16 December 2012 - 12:01 PM.

[jonbey]

Just look at how the mainstream newspapers do it. Many use press releases, but they rewrite and spin something in that they know their readers will like. Easy way to see what they do is take a bunch of press releases which have quotations and search for the quotes - they have to keep these as they were said. Also works the reverse, if you read a news item and there is a quote, search for just the quote and you should quickly locate the original press release. You will also see a lot of duplicates.

Not sure what the best way is really, but I generally use RSS feeds (into Thunderbird) to pick up news from relevant journals in the hope to jump on something sooner than the big boys. The key is to get in first and be unique. And add value. One last tip (no idea if it helps) always reference the original news story - nobody else ever does this, so it may set you apart.

[tam]

Depends on your goal, if you are providing aggregated news to specific people who know about your website then posting verbatim is fine. If you want to compete in search engines for top position for that news item then you really need unique content.

A lot of press releases will have a contact for information which you can use to get different facts, or go to the sources quoted for more info, you can also rewrite in your own style or from your perspective (ie your opinion on a story), or present the information in a different way (video yourself reading the news/graphical presentation of facts etc).

[hitechsol]

That is really wonderful. So many fine and experienced folks have come out to give suggestions. Now I am pretty clear what I need to do for this blogs Thanks everyone.

Sincerely,

[glyn]

Just look at how the mainstream newspapers do it. Many use press releases, but they rewrite and spin something...

Did someone {say|mention} spin?